Fool Me Twice
by Akihikari
Summary: Repetition has never held much appeal for you - not when you were alive, and certainly not now after eons in the endless monotony of the afterlife. So when the first breath of change steals into your existence, what can you do except cling to it for as long as you can? What can you possibly do except hope that he is a chance to keep your history from repeating itself?
1. One

_Fool Me Twice_

oOo

_One_

It is some time before your mind begins to notice the pinpricks of pain in your balled fists. It is even longer before you think to unclench them; your fingers are stiff yet trembling, and your nails are freshly tipped with bright, irreverent red.

This is not the first time you have drawn blood in this way, nor the first time you have felt a flicker of irritation at the absurdity of its color. Not the first time your long-suffering sweater has come in handy as you covertly wipe your hands on its sides. Not the first time you have stared at the crescent-shaped indentations on your palms and wondered _why._

This is not the first time you have stumbled across yourself. Fallen over your own thoughts. Flailed for words, for reason, and found nothing but a blind rage.

Your name is Kankri Vantas. Her name floats around her, laughing at the sky, crumpling the sand: _Latula, Latula._

_Latula Pyrope, _the air whispers.

You feel yourself stand and begin to walk away; it's a slow, painful thing to do and probably even more so to watch. In your mind—your frightened, rage-fogged mind—you can hear her calling after you. _Wait up, KK! Leaving already? Where are you going?_ You smile to yourself, fully aware that she never saw you watching in the first place.

It is some time before you are completely alone again, and even longer before you realize that you had been alone from the start.

_Again..._

_I'm lost again, yet again,_ you think.

A bewildered sort of crash rings out behind you in the distance, followed by a stream of fluent cursing. Mituna has fallen down again. Again Latula will kneel beside his prone, twitching body with that impenetrable smile and grasp his shoulders and help him sit up. Again they will cling to each other, uncaring of the several hundred universes that are sewn into the patchwork of the afterlife, uncaring of who sees, who notices, who has been watching from behind the trees.

This is not the first time any of this has happened, and you are beginning to feel lost again; lost in the meaningless cycles, repetitions, iterations; lost in the untethered twirling of your current existence; lost in anger and despair and very real fear.

Somewhere in the endless expanse of memory bubbles, you see Damara raise one trembling hand to her face.

_She has been crying, _you think. For a few moments—or is it months, or twenty untold sweeps? Time has long lost meaning—it seems like an agreeable course of action for you to take as well; it is an intense thing to do and would provide you with much-needed distraction from yourself and your festering thoughts. However, your blank, white eyes remain resolutely dry. You cannot shed a tear no matter how you struggle.

_I suppose one needs relative sorrow to cry spontaneously... but I have felt this way for so long already, maybe my heart has ceased to identify it as pain?_

_Is it pain... this hollow numbness, this anger?_ Is the burning in your chest, the dizzy chanting of your mind, the same as the prickle in your bleeding hands?

_It could be just boredom._

_It could be fear._

_It could be pure rage with nothing behind it._

_Or it could be pain._ Again you return to yourself and you are now on the ground—when did you sink to the ground?—your back against an enormous tree and the grass soft, yet crisp, against your skin. There are trees everywhere, now that you think to take a look around you; you have not come this way before, and you are immensely relieved.

_This is my first time here..._

You should not be surprised. The afterlife is impossibly vast and you have done little by way of exploring, preferring to remain in places you were familiar with on Beforus, but you allow yourself a pleased smile nonetheless as the forest sighs gently.

Firsts have grown rare.

_I need to get away from this... this madness..._ this blind monotony will kill you a second time if you do not do something about it, you are sure, but... _what do I do?_

_I'm an old troll now; old in a still young body and in desperate need of a death that will never come._

_What an existence, Kankri Vantas. How... triggering._ How triggering indeed. You offer the forest a wry, unamused smile, and the empty air smiles back.

"Trigger warning", you mutter absent-mindedly. "TW for intense boredom and mentions of suicidal tendencies."

A voice among the trees clearly says, "Fuck."

_...Karkat?_

You could have sworn that that had been the voice of your young descendant; there are few others like it, so keen-edged and petulant. Before you decide to process the reason he had sounded so upset, you are already calling out, in sore need of fresh company. "Karkat, that is you, isn't it?"

_It's not the first time I'm seeing him either, anyway. Even if he decides to run, he's nothing new either at this point._

So you welcome the astonishment when you see the sullen face emerge from the green darkness below the trees. _He's always scowling. _

_Bless him. _Karkat is still a change.

"I didn't know you were here", the younger troll is saying irately. "I came this way looking for somewhere to be alone and this place is normally deserted. Sorry. I'll leave."

"Well, I wouldn't mind if you were to join me", you begin, but the abject horror on Karkat's face causes your voice to die away, and a cold little blot begins to take root in your stomach. _So he doesn't like to see me either._ "I can just leave if you'd like", you finish, your voice steady. _To be honest, I'm not in the best of shape to be talking at length._

"Why'd I want to make you leave?" Karkat only looks further annoyed by your suggestion. "You found this place." _Though I wish you hadn't,_ the brittleness of his words tells you. He is turning to go when you find your voice again, though it sounds quieter than usual and rather dispirited to your own ears.

"If you want to sit here, you can talk all you want and I won't monopolize the conversation."

Karkat stops, but he doesn't look your way again. "I don't want to talk." _Not to you, at least,_ you clearly hear.

"Good", you say tonelessly. "Neither do I."

There's a moment of strained silence in which the unending world beyond you drifts serenely by, you sink a little further, and Karkat's glower washes over your furrowed forehead in a way that is both unpleasant and not. Then the black-shoulders rise and fall in a resigned shrug and he makes his way into the little clearing, his scowl firmly in place.

"Let's just pretend", he says jerkily, flopping down beside you, "that I'm not Karkat and you're not Kankri—let's pretend that we don't know each other. I don't want to deal with people right now."

_Let's pretend that we don't know each other, you say..._

"We don't, though", you mutter.

"What?"

"We don't know each other." You steal a sideways glance at the younger troll's expression and give up this train of thought as a bad job. "It's alright, I understand what you're saying. If it helps, I'll pretend."

You receive only a grunt in response and for a few—_minutes? Hours?—_the air is empty again.

Your mind, however, is not. It rattles on tirelessly as you regard the grass blades with a weary eye before shutting them out altogether; in the darkness of your eyelids you search for peace, for an end, and find only the dazed ramblings of your living memories.

_God, I am tired._

"You're talking out loud", Karkat says swiftly and you bite your tongue, mumbling an absent-minded apology. In the split second before you lapse into silence again, something pokes your arm.

You open your eyes to see your descendant glaring at you with a defiant mix of curiosity and frustration that you have never seen before. Taken aback as you are, it is a wonderful first.

"I'm going to regret every nook-sniffing moment of this, but—what's the matter with you?"

"I'm sorry?"

"You—" he pokes your arm again with one slender finger, so similar to your own, and you stiffen automatically. "What happened to your fucking sermons? How are you even sitting here without tagging trigger warnings for grass abuse and objectifying trees?"

"Don't touch me." You make a show of being very unkind indeed to the grass as you scoot away to a distance where he cannot comfortably reach out to poke you again. "Trigger warnings are not jokes, Karkat, and I do not use them lightly." You should be angry, you know, or at the very least offended... But somehow your very emotions have exhausted themselves. _All my fuel reserves are burning up and I still have to go on._

Your name is Kankri Vantas and you have never been more tired in the entirety of your existence.

"Triggers are specific phrases or topics that can set off unwanted emotional responses in sensitive people", you hear yourself saying; your mouth is beginning to overtake you again. "It should be everyone's objective to avoid causing others inadvertent emotional suffering in the event of them having such triggers, and while the rest of my friends chose to eschew this undertaking I—"

"Kankri."

"Ah, I'm sorry", you say immediately, now feeling nothing short of miserable, "I'm sorry I keep getting carried away, I just—"

"If you don't stop talking, I am going to go out of my way to trigger both of us."

You stiffen further; your irritation, previously numb and dormant, is beginning to surface with unexpected rapidity. "I am lucky enough to not have any ostensible triggers that I know of, Karkat, unless you plan to violate my personal space, which I'll thank you not to do—"

"_Pyrope."_

The world stops turning; the afterlife melts.

Your voice drops and then dies.

Karkat is breathing heavily, his eyes aflame. "_Pyrope,_ fucker. Now stick that in your sanctimonious little piehole and smoke it." As he gets to his feet, angrily brushing at the little bits of grass that still cling to his pants, he mutters, "At least we have_ that_ in common."

And his footfalls fade away into the trees, and you are alone again, once again coming to terms with the realization that you have been alone from the very start.


	2. Two

_Two_

oOo

The next time you see Latula, her back rests against the strange pink-brown trunk of the plant that you have come to think of as the brain tree, her legs are stretched out, her arms limp on either side of her slender torso: the picture of lazy contentment.

Mituna is sprawled on the ground next to her, his helmet lying forgotten to one side, apparently fast asleep. You allow yourself a sideways glance at his face, obscured by his tumbly hair as always, and wonder if you could possibly be any more different.

You wonder if you could possibly feel any more pained and weary. You wonder if you could possibly hate yourself any more than you do now.

You move on.

oOo

Damara is standing with Rufioh and you do not understand a word of her speech.

"Ah, I'm sorry, doll." Fragments of their conversation float over to you, stripped of all meaning by the distance. "No, I don't think..." "_Atashi wa anata no me no mae ni—!_" "Damara, you need to—"

At least she is no longer crying. _That's a change. It's still something._

You sigh, unnoticed, and move on.

oOo

The forest you stumbled upon a few—_days? Hours?_—ago is deserted, and the trees stand tall in the low light streaming into your glade, stately and steadfast. _Nothing's changed._

_Nothing ever changes._

And yet, you know something has changed.

Your heart has changed. Where you previously found anger, you now find nothing but bitterness; where there was hope—no matter how little—there is but despair; where there was inescapable longing, you find only, _only_ a liquid fatigue that seeps through your bones from the base of your ankles to the very tips of your horns.

_Am I going to be like this forever? Dull and jaded and full of blunt resentment?_

Your thoughts have died, leaving a hollow ache in their place. You have all the peace and quiet you have ever wished for. For the first time, it is dead silent in your head, and you would be lying if you said it didn't frighten you.

The grass is still soft and ungrudging against your body. You could have first found this place a sweep ago. You could have found it yesterday. You could have found it at any time and it would be the same and that is precisely why time has lost all meaning for you.

That is precisely why you feel your sanity beginning to slip...

And, to your sudden, utter astonishment and delight, your mouth opens wide of its own accord in what can only be a yawn.

_I'm..._

_I'm sleepy..?_

When was the last time you could sleep, Kankri Vantas?

_I don't seem to recall sleeping since—since I was last alive,_ you think, hazily registering that you have begun to slide further down the tree trunk until your head is nestled among its roots. _I just never needed to..._

_My mind was so wild, so untamed..._

_Where has it gone all of a sudden, and why am I left with only this emptiness?_

You try to remember the last time you felt that familiar desperation for some peace, but the impossibility of time and perception in the afterlife makes it a frustrating and enormously futile task; you give up soon, choosing instead to enjoy your doze while it lasts, surrounded by quiet beauty and green-tinted, marvelously unscorching sunlight.

_Green..._

Your eyelids are getting heavier and you are weak with relief.

_That tree cover..._

You need sleep and you are going to get some.

_...Karkat came out of that gap in the trees, didn't he?_ Emerging from the greenish darkness with that scowl and his thoughtless words and his displeasure at finding Kankri there and—

"_Pyrope."_

"_Pyrope, fucker."_

Your eyes drift shut; you are asleep within minutes, sinking into the black slumber of those who have been dead for aeons. And somewhere in the recesses of your numb, sedated mind, it stirs.

"_Pyrope."_

_I know when I began feeling like this._

It stirs, and it sleeps, and you are lost to the world under the benevolent canopy of your first forest.

oOo

Karkat is sitting beside you. You sense, more than see, his twitch of annoyance and discomfort as he sees you watching him through your drowsy, uncomprehending gaze. Something about it feels strange; surreal, almost, and you know you are dreaming.

_Why am I dreaming of Karkat?_

"Well, at least you're not ghost dead", the younger troll mutters, as ornery as ever. If he has any recollection of their last meeting, he does not show it. _How long ago was it for him? How long has it been for me? _"You've been out for ages."

"_Pyrope, fucker."_

"Why are you here?" you ask dazedly.

"What do you mean?" Karkat's face is sulky. "I like this place. I'm not about to stop coming here just because of you."

_Well, it is only a dream, so... _

Awake, your response would probably have differed, but you are warm and surprisingly comfortable in your layers of fresh sleep and there are no reasons you can think of to not speak your mind. So you allow yourself a smile that turns into a grimace halfway through and mumble, "I'm glad."

Karkat casts you a sharp glance. "Why the fuck that would make someone happy is beyond me."

"I don't know", you say plaintively. "It's a nice change." _Let's just leave it at that._

"Is it really that boring out here?" he snorts, clumps of grass bent out of shape in his clenched fists. "Is it so boring that you're prepared to put a lid on your lectures to keep someone like me around?"

Dream or not, you do not have to think twice. "Yes. Very much." A pause. "I do not _lecture_."

"Yeah, and I piss Faygo." His nostrils flare for a second. "Has no one actually talked to you about this at all? I find it near impossible to believe that you and your teammates spent almost eight fucking sweeps on a planet like Beforus and no one got it into their think pans to just try and stop—" he shakes his head, seemingly lost in his own sentences; he does have rather creative sentence structures, you think amusedly. When he resumes, his voice is tighter, more distant.

"It's a wonder", he says to the trees, "that nobody ever told you this, but you are downright _insufferable_."

_Oh._

The tight cold bud in your stomach, lying dormant for you know not how long, bursts into bloom.

"They've told me."

"Eh?"

"I said", you hedge out without looking at him, "they've told me." You turn away and onto your side, drawing your knees up to your chest, blinking wearily at the grass that weaves through your line of vision in deep green blurs. _This weariness follows me even into my dreams..._

"It's their nickname for me. The Insufferable."

Even with your disoriented sense of time, you know that the pause that follows is very long.

Then there is a hand on you, not poking, just resting on your arm with unexpected caution; you can feel it through your sweater, the uncertainty, the readiness to spring away at the slightest sign of objection, the humming of bones and veins and mutant candy red blood in your descendant's hand that is so similar to your own. And you do not have the heart to resist its touch.

You wait for the spoken apology. It doesn't come. You find that you no longer care.

"Tag your triggers, Karkat", you murmur, and this time you wait for the snap. The second storming off. The outburst that _this isn't fucking Bubblr or whatever stupid website you picked up your tagging and triggers and outlandish notions of social justice from, this is the real world, this is—_

"I will", Karkat says quietly.

When did the dream fade away? When did you wake up to realize that you had been awake all along? In your distorted, memory-haunted version of reality in the afterlife, does it even matter?

_It wasn't a dream..._

_And my response is still the same._ "I'm glad", you say. Another pause swells between the two of you, fragile, punctuated by the sound of your heartbeat. "You're not going to go, are you?"

He's looking at you now. You look back from your position at the base of the tree that he sits against and he holds your gaze for some time, his hair falling about his face in a jumble that mirrors yours, his eyes warm and bemused and flashing you a thousand different answers.

_I don't want you to go. I've been losing my mind._

"No", he says at last. "I'll stay. I've been bored too."

Some unknown language of red makes itself known in your chest; before you can even wonder at what this impossibly new sense of happiness is, it has melted the shard of cold in your gut altogether and you are left with a shaky delight, cracked down the middle like a thaw. Unable to say much, you whisper your thanks.

"I'm telling you, it's nothing to be thankful for", he says sullenly. "I've already been an ass to you twice in the brief amount of time we've known each other, there's nothing to say that this won't keep happening."

"Well", you manage to say, "you tag your triggers and I'll tag mine."

"What if we have the same trigger, though?" His gaze is keen on your skin but not wholly repugnant. "What do we do then?"

"_Pyrope, fucker",_ he'd said that day. _"At least we have that in common."_

You stifle a sigh that is equal parts fatigue and bewilderment at yourself. "We talk."

"I don't want to talk", Karkat says immediately. "Not about that."

"Neither do I", you reply, fighting to keep your voice steady. "But it should help. I—it should help us both." You push yourself into a sitting position and the hand on your arm falls away at last, leaving a tingling tepidness in its wake. "Let's talk about Pyrope." _Our triggers. Your Pyrope, my Pyrope..._

_She was never mine in any way._

_And what about you? Was your Pyrope ever truly yours?_

The forest feels large, all-encompassing; your tree is but a speck in this ocean of jade and olive, your voices the chirping of insects, your footfalls the tracks of marchbugs on grass blades. It would swallow your words whole. You know this and are glad again.

"Tell me", you mutter. "Tell me about yours and I'll tell you about—about mine."

_Is this the first of many changes? Or am I still alone?_

Karkat lowers his eyes to the ground, offers a tiny nod, and starts talking.


	3. Three

_Three_

oOo

"...but that's another story in itself and I'm not ready to go down that—does time even pass here?"

"I'm sorry?" You look at Karkat in some surprise; he is gazing up into the leafy canopy with probing eyes, showing no signs of wanting to resume his story.

"This place. This afterlife dream-memory bubble thing that you people hang out in. Does time pass at all? We've been sitting here for ages, but the shadows haven't moved at all."

Despite your earnest desire to finish hearing Karkat's story of what had happened with his Pyrope—_Terezi, her name is Terezi—_you shrug and reply absent-mindedly, "Not in a way that you are familiar with, I think. These are all constructed from memory; they remain the same through tens of thousands of sweeps. After a while time begins to lose its significance."

_It was driving me crazy._

"But returning to what you were saying...?"

"I'm done", Karkat mutters. He looks very young and very troubled, sprawled out on the springy grass with his hands behind his head and his half-lidded eyes rather distant. He also looks significantly less angry than he ever has. "That's really all there is to say on the matter." Is there a shift in the tone of his voice when he speaks again, or are you imagining it? "Your turn."

_My turn...?_

"My story isn't as gripping." There isn't much to say, actually, not when you compare it to Karkat's long and painfully complicated description of his own relationship, his behavior... _Because I had no relationship, there was nothing to behave about, no signals to give off._

_My story is a complete and total lack of a story._

Something in Karkat's face flickers with irritation at this. "I didn't tell you about my shit because it was gripping. I told you because you asked. Now I'm asking for yours, so spit it out already."

His eyes have not left the canopy overhead; you spend a moment—or several—absently contemplating the gray of his irises, wondering if they will start to turn red soon, wondering how he feels about that.

_That's not it..._

"_Pyrope, fucker."_

You don't trust yourself to give your story the brevity it deserves, not when your sentences can be so long and your tone so rambling. You cannot remember the last time you made a conscious effort to dial back the verbosity that you once cultivated with a passion; the thought simultaneously irritates and frightens you.

_I'm beginning to forget what it was like to be alive, Karkat._

"I'll keep this as short as I can", you hear yourself say. "I knew Latula Pyrope from a young age; we were probably three or four sweeps old when we met. She was nice to me. She—" _Don't stop. Don't stop. _"She was actually really nice to everyone, but—well—"

"It's fine", Karkat cuts in, and there is no heat in his voice at all this time. He still isn't looking at you. "I know how that goes. Believe me."

"You know—?"

"Yes." The trees rustle in the unmoving air and, to your disgust, you feel a stab of relief at not having to explain. _It's pathetic._

"Pathetic, isn't it?" says Karkat, uncannily apropos. "But go on."

"Well—we were just six sweeps old when we played the game, same as you." This is part is easy, you think... This part is just facts. Just hard dry facts as long as you can keep it brief. "We did badly, to say the least. Your society seems to have revolved around fighting for survival from a young age; ours was nothing like that. But some of us did better than the others, particularly Meenah and Damara... Well, at least until they took to fighting each other instead..." _Straight to the point. I can't keep going off at tangents._

"Anyway... I was probably worse off than anyone else, which did not stand me in very good stead, and Latula... well, if I am honest, she wasn't much better than I was, but she helped along as best she could."

_It's getting harder already. _Your need to keep things short can does nothing to help.

_Let's just get this over with, shall we?_

"She was a good friend and I felt almost justified in harboring red feelings for her after a certain point. Then her other good friend met with an accident and quite literally lost his mind, and she's been entirely devoted to taking care of him ever since." You feel your mouth twist with all the bitterness of your gut, the bitterness of countless confused sweeps. "She became his matesprit some time before we died and death did nothing to change that."

The silence that follows is a blank white.

Karkat raises his eyes to yours from the grass. "And?"

"And nothing", you say tonelessly. "That's really all there is to say on the matter." A few blades of grass lie, crumpled and lifeless, in your hands. You do not remember how they got there. "'My' Pyrope actually belongs to Mituna Captor."

"Captor", Karkat murmurs, turning away abruptly. "What's he like?"

_Infuriating._

_There's no other word for it._

The words feel like they are being wrenched from you, giving you no time to think, to wonder what your descendant might say. "I think I hate him."

There is absolutely no wonder in Karkat's voice as he replies, "I know."

_Of course you know._

"It's just—" _Am I talking too much?_ "It's just—you know—I shouldn't be hating him."

The younger troll still isn't looking at you. "I do know."

_Mituna isn't all the way here. Sometimes I wonder if he's even aware of his feelings for Latula. Sometimes I wonder if he even knows they're matesprits. _How can you use up so much energy in envious hatred of a person whose broken mind alone is more misfortune than you would consciously wish upon anyone?

And yet, that's exactly what you've been doing. You know it. And Karkat, with his own violent feelings, knows it.

He's talking again. "You know... the afterlife is basically unending, isn't it? What's to say that things won't turn in your favor again sometime?"

_Really?_ You don't know whether to laugh or give in to frustration again. "If you had an eternity to spend with the Terezi of present—just the way she is, never changing—would things turn in _your_ favor?"

"Fuck no", he says jerkily, "but we're younger and more stubborn. It's different with—"

"It's not." You cannot even bring yourself to feel guilty for interrupting. "Sometimes, Karkat, eternity isn't enough."

"You haven't lived for eternity."

"I'm living it now, aren't I? Eternity is not a specified time period. None of us can even remember how long it's been since we died—isn't that enough? For how long do you expect us to keep count before the monotony of the days melts away all sense of time and day and month and sweep and all we are aware of is the fact that, despite ostensibly having died long ago, we are very much a different kind of alive?"

Karkat _still_ isn't looking at you, but what you can see of his face is astonishment and a much softer form of the anger that he carries everywhere; dimly, you register that your voice has risen.

When he speaks again, his voice is dry. "Wow."

You have no response to that except the harshness of your breathing.

"This isn't even about Pyrope for you, do you realize that?" he says softly. "You're just fucking tired of living with yourself."

"Don't I know it!" you snarl. _What's happening to me?_ More grass in your fisted hands, meek against the sweaty sheen of your palms; you force yourself to look away from your descendant's unreadable face and stare instead at the crushed blades. Somewhere, you register that the crescent-shaped nail marks have not faded yet, and you know it has not been very long since you last met Karkat. It is the first instance of time passing that you have found in this wretched slurry of worlds.

"Why won't you look at me?" you say presently with a petulance that you had not known you were feeling. "Wait, no, don't answer that. I just made a spectacle of myself. I am sorry. It's just—it's been a long time since anyone actually asked me to talk, and..." _And with good reason, looks like._

"I'm not looking at you", he says, "because I've never liked myself much. That's all."

You try to gauge the thoughts behind his deadpan expression, and come up with nothing. "I am not you. You know that, don't you?"

"I didn't say you were me." His eyes rest lightly on the pooling beams of sunlight from a forgotten sky, filtering through the dense foliage overhead. _This really is a beautiful place. Whose memory is this, I wonder?_

"That's what bothers me, actually... We're not as different as I used to think, but we're nowhere near similar enough for me to hate you as much as I hate myself."

"Well", you ask quietly, "do you _want_ to hate me?" _There are certainly enough despicable things about me that anyone would be tempted to._

_And if you still don't hate me as much as you hate yourself... just how much self-loathing are you carrying around with you?_

_Is it anything like mine?_

The silence lasts for ten thumps of your stirred heart in your ears. Then, to your surprise, he shakes his head. "Hate is fucking exhausting. This is going to sound incredibly stupid coming from me, but—I really don't like hating people. It's so much easier to care for them."

_What a strange person you are._

Your voice is gentler than you intended. "So you'd prefer to hate yourself instead?"

He turns and looks you in the face at last; his eyes are weary. "You know how that is."

You do not need to think before nodding resignedly. _But you are nowhere near as unlikeable as you believe yourself to be. I wish someone would show you that._

_I wish someone would show _me_ that. If they did—even if it were just one person, just one—I think I could learn to tolerate myself. I could learn to stop hating if just one person were to show me that it's possible._

"I'm sorry I talk so much", you mumble. "Sometimes I start off with one thought and end up including several others in the same sentence and it probably sounds terrible to a bystander."

Karkat shrugs. "It's irritating as fuck, I'll give you that, but... I'm not a bystander."

_And my thoughts are no longer the clamoring multitude that they were._ _God, it's a relief._

"The meteor will leave this bubble in a while", he's saying, and once again his voice betrays nothing. "I should be going. But—for what it's worth—if I can come back next time, I will."

A desperately lonely part of you—a very large, very insistent part—wants to make him promise. You bat the thought away with a scowl. _Just when I thought I couldn't get any more pathetic._

"You..." Karkat has raised himself up on his elbows and is surveying you with a scowl of his own. "You need to stop thinking out loud. Fucking work on that, it's disgraceful to hear your thoughts spilling out of you like you can't even contain them."

But before the mortified blush can rise to your cheeks, he adds, "But just so you know, there's nothing pathetic about not wanting to be alone."

_What a remarkable person you are._

He's already on his feet. _I'm sorry I'm such bad company, too._

"It's been terrible is all", you whisper, half hoping he doesn't hear you. He does.

"Here."

His hand is on your shoulder again. This time he gives it a quick squeeze before withdrawing. This time it does not even occur to you to object. And like last time, tingling needles dance beneath your skin.

He gives a little cough. "Hang in there. I said I'd be back, didn't I?"

_But when?_ You cannot bring yourself to articulate the question even in your mind as he disappears among the trees. Does he know the answer? Do you want to know?

In a world where time has no meaning, does the answer even matter?


	4. Four

_Four_

_Forty-one._

"Would you like a handkerchief?" _She's been crying again. I can only keep looking for so long._

Damara is quiet, her tear-stained face turned to the ground, her shoulders drooping limply, but the hand that she extends to take your handkerchief is firm and does not shake; she dabs at her eyes once, twice, then looks up and offers you a watery smile.

_Forty-two._

"I'd sit beside you, but... I have to be elsewhere", you mumble. "I'd ask you what's wrong, but I don't understand what you say. But if you are feeling triggered again and need assistance sorting out your emotions, I will do my best to help." _I'd say more, but I don't really need to._

_My thoughts are beginning to settle down for good._ And so are your words.

"Keep the handkerchief. It's not like I've had occasion to use it all this while, so you might as well hang on to it."

_Forty-three._

"Arigatou." At least this you understand. "_Thank you_."

"It's nothing", you say quietly. "I know how hard it can be to keep going when things are terrible."

You walk away as soon as you can, almost stumbling under impatience, awkwardness, and relief. _We hardly ever spoke, after all. ...Not that we could._ But you have seen her cry on several occasions now and there was little you could do to stop yourself, little reason to try.

_Forty-four._

At your sides, your fingers keep their count; not quite seconds, too short to be minutes. You only have a vague sense of what time units were even like and ended up making your own just to be safe—ticks in time to the thud of your feet on the ground, to the soft whoosh of your breath in the still air, to the reluctant beat of your heart.

You will bring time back.

Even if it means having reset the counter a million times, even if it means keeping track of just how many numbers have passed since you last saw the person who had said he'd return, you will do it.

_Forty-five._

oOo

At five hundred and twenty-seven, you find yourself back in the forest and something tells you to stop counting.

_This place... this place never changes,_ you think, though you are beginning to remember the way to your clearing among the labyrinthine trails and sharp, green-tinted sunrays. You have gotten lost here on occasion, but not measuring time meant that you have no idea how long you blundered about before finding your way again. This time your feet know where to take you.

You tell yourself that you are not expecting Karkat to be there, which is just as well, because the clearing is empty as ever when you reach it. Then, sitting against the tree that you have developed a particular preference for, your eyes finally come to rest on the grass and you see that several of the blades are crushed.

_So this place does remember._

"Five hundred and twenty-eight", you murmur.

_It's working, it's really working._

You are still bored, still bitter and weary and alone, but you no longer feel like you are losing your mind, and that makes all the difference.

_Because really, when I have not been bored and bitter and weary and alone? As long as I have time on my side, this is no different from when I was alive._

"Five hundred and twenty-nine."

_I wonder if there are flowers growing somewhere in this forest..._

Do things grow in the afterlife? Will the grass you have crushed stay that way forever, an unchanging testimony to your existence? Unsure as to whether the thought is comforting or unnerving, your fingers weave through the soft green blades regardless. _This is silly. I should just carve my name into the tree and have done with it._

"Five hundred and thirty."

"_How are you even sitting here without tagging trigger warnings for grass abuse and objectifying trees?" _he'd demanded, the heat in his eyes reluctant but curious and very genuine. You cannot help the smile that this brings to your lips; the stretch of your face feels decidedly unnatural, and you realize that you do not remember the last time you smiled. _Was it with Karkat?_

_I'm not waiting for Karkat._

There is no counting the days and nights here, of course, not when the memories of darkness stay dark and those of the daytime stay steeped, like this forest, in a constant light. But six times you have counted up to a thousand, six times you have reset the counter... you mumble "Five hundred and thirty-one" with a new sense of dejection and try not to see yourself resetting it many, many times before your next break from boredom.

"Trigger warning for grass abuse and objectifying trees", you whisper with a mirthless chuckle.

_I shouldn't be waiting for Karkat._

_I should go look for flowers._

But you do not move and you cannot sleep, and your fingers pluck out one blade of grass for every number you count off until you begin to wonder if you will leave the entire forest floor bare.

oOo

"Six hundred and twelve", you start to say, but then something stirs in the gloom between the trees and your words trail off into nothingness.

Karkat is scowling as expertly as ever. His face betrays only annoyance as he gives you a once-over with raised eyebrows.

"What's the counting for? God damn, don't tell me you've been _counting the seconds?"_

"Well, not the seconds, no", you mutter through the faint warmth that you know is glazing your cheeks. "They're longer than that. But it's the only way I can keep track of the time."

_You really did come back. Why did you come back?_

"That's... That's just fucked up." And just like that, he's sitting beside you with an ease that he is already beginning to perfect; again you find yourself questioning why. "D'you know though, the meteor that we're on is permanently dark. Keeping track of the nights is becoming a goddamn chore when there's no sky to look at, just the shitty rooms we're holed up in—you actually start missing the day when you're stuck in a place darker than a hoofbeast's asshole for almost a sweep and a half."

"Is that why you like coming here?" you ask idly, trying to keep your voice level.

He still doesn't look straight at you when he talks. "Pretty much."

_Of course._

You try not to feel the tiny frozen firework that goes off in your stomach, and it is your turn to look away. "Must be nice coming here, then. This is actually a rather pleasant amount of sunlight if you ask me."

"Well, I can't say I come here often enough that it's much of a pastime for me", he says, truculent againn. "You must like it here, having it all to yourself when I'm not around to bore the freakishly long pants off you."

_Is it so hard to believe that I may actually look forward to your visits?_

_But is it looking forward? Isn't this a whole lot closer to just clutching at the moments that make me feel alive?_

You ask none of these things. What you ask instead is, "How do you know about the pants? ...And there is nothing ridiculous about them."

He snorts quietly. "I'm not about to waste my precious few moments of relative peace arguing about the objective hilarity provided by your taste in fashion, but to answer your question, Meenah told me."

"My taste in fashion is perfectly fine", you say with some petulance of your own rather fresh in your voice, thinking rather unkind thoughts of Meenah. "Honestly, I wouldn't be wearing this sweater if it didn't get so chilly out here sometimes." _Do I really mean that, though?_ You allow yourself to imagine Porrim knitting, incandescent fingers moving in time to the click-clack of her needles, her brow furrowed in concentration, and a wave of affection that is faintly horrifying in its enormity washes over you.

_I wish I wasn't so sick of seeing their faces..._

_I can't stand their faces, so I seek out one that resembles my own. I sense some irony there._

"...you're not listening, are you?"

"Huh?" you give an involuntary twitch as you realize that Karkat is giving you one of his rare full-on gazes. "Oh my, I am so sorry. I just..." _I'm forgetting what it's like to have a conversation. _The very prospect of being swallowed by your expansive thoughts is depressing, but it creeps up on you when you think you're getting better and you know this is going to take a while.

"It's fine", he says before you can gather up the words to finish your sentence. "You've been dead for a fuckton of time."

"I sense some bias towards the spirits of the dead", you say feebly, and you cannot tell if you are joking. "Is this is a new form of bigotry?"

"It's me telling you that you've forgotten how to talk like a normal fucking person, so you needn't trip yourself up trying to hide it. Zone out all you want, blather all you want, just don't pretend like you're used to holding conversations any more. It's pathetic as dammit." His eyes have not left you.

"I am not conversationally impaired", you reply. Once again your voice carries your emotions better than your heart.

"Not everything has to be about impairment and advantage and privilege, for fuck's sake. Does it really matter that you have a problem so long as I don't mind and am still fucking sitting here?"

When did your fingers begin shredding grass again? "What if it does?"

"Why should it, though?" Karkat demands, his voice back to full volume and anger back to its hard-edged gleam. "Why do you feel the compulsive need to obsess over equality in spheres that, let alone being of great consequence, don't even occur to most people? Why can't you see that instead of gaining you acceptance, it's just isolating you?"

In the ringing silence that falls, you avert your own eyes and say dully, "Because I'm dead."

The tension is blinding.

"I don't know how that answers anything at all", Karkat mutters.

"It should", you say with a new surge of weariness. "I'm dead and you're not and sometimes—a lot of the time—I think of how trapped we must seem to you and that makes it hard to talk to you like I am a part of your existence in any meaningful way."

Karkat looks angry and reluctantly confused and younger than ever amongst the green as his shoulders slump. His tone is sullen as he says, "If you want to feel alive, I guess the first step is to keep track of time."

_Ah._ Your insides twist with sudden alarm. "I haven't been counting this whole time, I—!" _How long has it been? How many numbers? _How could you have counted to your heartbeat when your descendant has sent it into a different rhythm altogether?

_Am I supposed to stop time when talking to you? Does it run on a different scale?_

"I was wondering whether or not to give you this, but I don't suppose I have any use for it at the moment, so..."

You look at him with some curiosity, hardly daring to ask. "You have something for me...?"

"Don't say it like that", he growls. "That makes it sound a whole lot more sentimental than it actually is. This is basically useless to me right now and I figured you'd use it better than I would. Not that I'd ever use this piece of shit anyway—I can't trust Strider to take requests like sane people do—all I did was ask him to make me a thing and he goes and produces this fart-sniffing abomination that I wouldn't be seen with in my worst nightmares. So you can have it. It's not like your fashion sense follows any rhyme or reason anyway, even by Alternian standards—"

"I get the picture", you cut in gently. _Do you even have the right to ask me not to ramble, I wonder..._ "But I appreciate the sentiment anyway. What is it?"

He reaches into a pocket, his little speech having done nothing to draw away the color spilling onto his cheeks. _It's red,_ you think absently. _Just like mine. That's... kind of nice._ It is the first time you have felt no annoyance whatsoever at the anomalous brightness of your blood.

"I should be going, actually", he's saying in a voice somewhat higher than usual. "This is embarrassing as fuck anyway, so here's an idea, don't look at it until I'm gone."

Something flat, long, and rubbery is pressed into one of your hands; his fingers brush yours and they are emanating a wonderfully ridiculous amount of heat. _Is it really that embarrassing?_

"I'm going now", he throws brusquely at you, intense awkwardness swirling in every movement. It flows along the bend of his knees as he stands and it creeps up his neck and you are trying not to smile because he is just so _red._

But you do as he says and keep looking straight ahead, not allowing your eyes to drop to whatever it is you're holding. "Karkat, it's alright, I—" _Thank you?_

_Thank—_

"It'll help you with the time. See you."

And just like that, the unwhispering leaves close in around his retreating back and you are alone again. And in your hand is a flowery pink wristwatch.

oOo

**Dave would totally get Karkat a lurid pink watch covered in tacky flowers if Karkat didn't specify what kind of watch he wanted this is not even in question okay :B**


	5. Five

_Five_

oOo

_Five minutes down. Five to go._

Sometimes Porrim forgets to turn down her light. Sometimes, when you have mercifully little occupying your mind and the echoes of the voices in your head are not as insistent, you find yourself watching the bend of her bare arms as her fingers flit over fabric, shaping garment after meticulously crafted garment, lipstick-stained thread and trimmed nails and harsh black tattoos standing out against the white that is her skin. She looks like a glowbug, and with some reluctance, you admit she also looks beautiful.

_I almost want to talk to her._ Almost, but not quite, and most certainly not when she is deep in conversation with Latula.

_Almost._

Your eyes sit stubbornly on Porrim's lip piercing and refuse to move to the tealblood no matter what. _I'm not going to look at her. This is too much. _Pushing it away is unhealthy, but the self-indulgent torture that is watching Latula Pyrope will be the end of you. There is only so much you can endure.

The watch ticks against your skin; you have turned the dial inwards, so its steel back sits on the pulsing veins in your wrist, sometimes synchronized, sometimes not, but always comforting. The stretchy cuffs of your sweater press against it ever so slightly and images of the watch being embedded into your arm flash around in your lazily disconcerted mind. It is not an unpleasant thought.

_I'd never lose track of time again._

You have all the time in the world, and it feels glorious.

But you have allotted only ten minutes to this moment; ten minutes for you to rest your elbows on the gaudy yellow banisters of Prospit's moon and slouch over yourself, the blankness of your eyes shielding your covert glances at the two women not too far away from you. You wonder what you would appear to be doing if one of them looked over to where you are standing. You wonder if it has even occurred to them to look your way. You wonder if they have noticed you at all.

Seven minutes have passed. The second hand's ticking seems to seep through your skin into the very surge of your blood, into every pump of your heart, and you think of Damara.

_What does a time player do when time is lost?_

_Like any of that matters. We are no longer in the game._

You are not looking at Latula, but you can feel her smile swim in the air. It frustrates your every sense—_what do I do with a smile that I can taste and hear and smell, but not see, much less touch?_ Well, it's not like she can even smell. You snort with laughter and immediately have to stomp out a rising sensation of disgust at yourself. _I'm dead, but I'm not ableist._

_Just two more minutes. Two minutes and I'll leave._

_I could stand here forever if she did._

_I want to leave right now._

oOo

And leave you do. The last two minutes are not quite up when your footfalls begin to puncture the rhythm of your watch; Latula's audible smile falls away and is soon indistinguishable from Porrim's low purr in the distance. If you try not to listen, you can close your eyes against what remains of their happy voices and sway in a breeze that you do not feel, the second hand's ticking providing you with a steady beat, and almost believe it to be music.

_Almost._

_Almost..._

_What am I doing?_

You have time. You have all the time in the world and nothing will ever convince you that things are not better this way. _But what comes with time? Now that I have time, what do I do with it?_

The tapping on your back is a most unwelcome answer indeed.

You know every square inch of the fingers that now grip your shoulder, and their owner is not someone you want to deal with at the moment; not even trying to hide the way your entire frame has stiffened, you turn to face a smiling Cronus Ampora.

"What is it that you want?"

"Do I have to want something? I just thought I'd have a chat with my good friend since he's been broodin' like a wiggler for... well, a hella long time."

_Time, you say. Like you'd know._

"I'm fine", you say evenly, shrugging his hand off with little ceremony. "And I think it's common knowledge by now that I don't like to be touched, Cronus. It's"—you find yourself pausing and, for some reason, Karkat's face materializes in your mind—"It's quite triggering for me."

He makes no attempt to stifle his snort, and you can feel that ungodly burning in your chest again—a sensation that you had hoped to leave behind untold sweeps ago. "Don't", you snap before he can open his mouth to speak. "We both know how this is going to pan out, so you might as well save your breath and my energy."

_I have good reasons for not talking to you, and I wish you'd see that._

"I wasn't gonna say anythin' about you being part of the social justice league of Bubblr or whatever", he mutters after a moment's silence. You are no longer looking at his face, feeling entirely too petulant to handle the rest of the conversation with any degree of maturity, so you cannot see his expression. You do not want to.

Again, just for a moment, you are reminded of Karkat and how he rarely meets your eyes.

_Is this how he feels, then?_

"I don't care", you grind out in response to both Cronus and yourself. "Why are you here? Why, really? I hope you don't actually expect me to believe that you wanted to talk to me only because you thought—mistakenly, I might add—that I was feeling a little off."

Your chest is still heaving with that nauseous burn as he lets out a chuckle. "I never said you was feeling 'off', chief. You've been weird lately is all, but you don't look unhappy—if anything, you're happier than you were. It's me who's been feelin' down."

"_You've_ been feeling..." you glance his way and can feel your brow furrowing. "What am I to do about it? What's bothering you?" _Of all the reasons you could have had for wanting to talk to me... How am I supposed to help you with this one?_

"_If anything, you're happier than you were..."_ _Have you been watching me?_

_Have you been watching me like I watch Latula? What's wrong with you?_

Your scowl intensifies and again—yet again—your thoughts wander back to Karkat, and they wonder how long it will be before you see him again.

"It's nofin", Cronus is saying, his tone airy and words curiously level. "I just—I dunno. I figured that if anyone can understand how screwy this whole afterlife deal is, it's probably you."

"'Screwy?' You're going to have to be more specific than that." Your patience is wearing painfully thin already, your composure tearing at the seams.

Cronus twitches a derisive fin in the tight silence that follows and then, all at once, bursts out, "Eridan's gone. He's just fuckin' _gone._ One night he was there and the next he just _wasn't._ There were other versions of him all over the place, of course—alternates from doomed timelines and shit—but the alpha Eridan—_my_ Eridan—fuckin' up and disappeared."

_Eridan...?_ "Are you referring to your descendant?" _Descendant? Ancestor? I'm not calling them "dancestors" like Porrim does, that sounds silly._

"Yeah, my fucking descendant", the other troll says impatiently. "He's not here in the afterlife any more. I searched for him like an asshole, lemme tell ya—searched for what felt like weeks—"

"You're afraid he might have been in one of the destroyed dream bubbles when it was wiped out", you finish, sounding weary to your own ears. "Is that what you're saying? That you're worried?"

The watch ticks at least a hundred times against your wrist before Cronus speaks up again. "I'm worried, I'll give ya that", he mumbles, "but it's more likely that he just left because he couldn't stand me."

"Well, I'm quite certain that wasn't the case." You find yourself having to fight down a sigh; when did you grow so tired? "Chances are someone prototyped his corpse and turned his ghost into a sprite in the physical world." _That is how it works, right? _You try to scrounge up the scraps of information dropped your way amongst Aranea's proselytizing and Karkat's irate rambles—_Karkat, I'm coming back to Karkat again—_and shrug when nothing else comes to mind.

"How long ago did this happen?"

"Hell if I know." His fins are twitching in a manner that, with a lingering sense of dismay, you find yourself able to read quite well. _I thought I'd forgotten. I certainly wanted to forget._ "Not like there's any way to tell the time in this place. But that's the thing—even if it feels like forever ago, it coulda happened yesterday and we wouldn't fuckin' know. This place is just—_stuck_. And he found a way out—or got pulled out, if you're right—but I'm just—not just me, all of us, we're still here, and it's..."

Now you are quite unable to look away from his face; you've never seen him like this, the blank white of his eyes doing nothing to hide his borderline panic, his mouth twisted into something that is as far from its usual greasy smile as it can possibly be.

_Of all the people, it's you who realizes how horrible this place is._

His cigarette dangles from his lips, forgotten and visibly on the verge of falling out altogether; before you can even ask yourself what you are doing, your hand is rising, pulling it out with two pinched fingers. You try to ignore his start of surprise as you hand it back to him and can almost believe that there is no embarrassed blush tinging your face.

_Almost._

"Worry doesn't look good on you, Cronus", you say quietly.

"What—"

"I'm afraid that's all I can say to you." _What else am I supposed to do? My job is to preach tolerance, not heal wounds. ...Especially not your wounds._ _Not when you couldn't even try to fix mine._ "He's gone. It's not going to be easy to deal with, certainly, and if you ever need to talk, I suppose I can listen to you... But I don't know what else to do."

_Karkat..._

"Yeah, I get it", Cronus says softly. Way too softly. "It's just—he was pretty cool. Shame to see him go, especially since I didn't actually get to see him go..."

_Is he going to come back at all? Should I wait in the forest?_

_Either way, I need to leave._

_I..._

"Here." You are only half aware of what you are doing as you step closer to the taller troll and, with one scramblingly quick motion, squeeze out the briefest of hugs before scooting further away again—too brief to feel the mad skip of his heartbeat or breathe in the smell of his sweat, things you have not encountered in a very long time and intend to keep that way. "I wish I could say that it's going to be okay, but I'm not in a position to promise you anything. Take care, and I'm sorry about your matesprit."

"He wasn't my—"

"Don't bother", you cut in, now positively itching with the need to get away. "You wouldn't have taken to watching me after his disappearance if you weren't trying to fill in the hole he left behind. Bye, Cronus."

Even to your distracted eye, he has never looked more deflated. "Yeah. See ya round, chief." _I don't want to turn back to that chapter. I'm just so tired of all of you._

_Where's Karkat?_ The ticking of your watch gives no reply.

_What is the point of having time on my side when all I can do is wait?_

OOo

**Sorry for the heavy implications in this chapter ;~; It kind of needed to be there for the story to advance, I'm gomen if any of you dislike Cronus (I'm a compulsive multishipper so I dunno...)**

**About the whole thing with Eridan, Amporacest is implied to be canon and I ship it so hard I helicarrier it, so I couldn't resist slipping in a little something :B But I thought that if they actually ended up in a relationship, it'd hit Cronus pretty hard when his ghost disappeared after Gamzee prototyped his corpse—not like they were expecting it. And all the more reason for Erisolsprite to be a grumpy bag of dicks, too.**

**Oh god I'm fully expecting some negative feedback tho _ But any feedback at all would be lovely of you people, really. (P.S. I'm awfully sick today and wrote half this chapter when suffering from a bitch of a fever, which might be why it reads kinda funny ugh I'm sorry)**


	6. Six

_Six_

oOo

Karkat's eyes are shut tight, his face not quite softened by sleep.

It is not just you who has had to wait after all. Your breath disintegrates, then comes back all at once, much like the hammering of your heart against your ribcage as it gives out a single dazed murmur: _he's here._

He's sprawled out on the grass in a manner uncannily similar to yours, lips parted, hair tousled, and very much _here. He's here,_ you think numbly.

_For how long have you been here?_

For how long have _you_ been waiting now, Kankri? Refusing to look at your watch or let your heart keep count of the seconds as they hum alongside the pulse of your wrist? _Does it matter any more?_

_He's here._

And you cannot bring yourself to wake him up.

With a tread that's much softer than usual, you take your usual place beside him; the ground feels softer than usual, more inviting, the boundless trees almost jubilant. Leaves brush laughingly against each other in a breeze you see but do not feel.

_Just how big even is this place..._ You never ventured beyond this clearing, did you? You found a place where your mind calmed down a little and clung to it. _Clung to Karkat, to be precise._ A quick glance at his sleeping figure turns into an unabashedly long gaze, comfortable in the knowledge that for once, you need not hide as you watch.

"I didn't honestly think you'd come back", you say to him.

_Didn't I? Didn't I believe him the first two times? He always came back, didn't he?_ Knees pulled up to your chest, you rest your chin on steepled fingers and wonder.

"Doesn't look like I'll wake you if I talk quietly." Your words carry more breath than voice. "Though if I am honest, you're a better listener awake than asleep. Anyone can just sit there, right...?"

_Can they, really?_ Has anyone else done as much for you before?

"...Right? But really good listeners don't just listen, they talk back... They offer their own thoughts, they..." _Have I ever allowed anyone to do that?_ "...They come back..."

_I didn't expect you to come back at all._

"No one ever does, you know." The longer your eyes rest on the clenched eyes of your descendant, the harder it grows to speak; why this lump in your throat? _Why am I such a fool?_

_But you did._

"And the thing is, I still don't know if you come here to see the sunlight and get away from your companions on the meteor or... Well, it's just... just a thought, really, but..."

_You look so peaceful now, that's all... who'd have thought your cheeks flushed so delicately in sleep?_

"...but sometimes I think—I hope—that it's because of me."

_You came back._

_I really am a fool..._

"I'm grateful", you mumble. As your head drops onto your knees, you realize just how tense the very muscles in your body have been, how they sigh now with the slump of your shoulders and droop of your eyelids; all the hope, all of the restless, ceaseless waiting crashes down on you in one warm wave of fatigue so intense that you feel light-headed. _Thank you._

_Heavens, I am tired... but thank you._ The leaves rustle just once, quietly, as though accepting your thanks.

_I'll wait till he wakes up,_ you think, even as your eyes try and fail to open against the red darkness of your sweater-clad arms. You have been waiting for too long; can you manage a little more?

_Yes, yes I can. I'll wait._

_What else do I have left anyway?_

But when the world materializes around you once again and you can open your eyes at last, you are alone and the forest is as silent as it has always been.

oOo

_Oh._

You remember this... It's crept back beneath your skin after so long, though, and at such an expected time... _Oh_, your mind repeats faintly, trying not to think back to tealbloods on skateboards and loud happy voices calling your name, saying goodbye, saying _It's okay, Kankz, I'll see you soon!_ saying _I'm sorry I couldn't make it, Kaykay, but Mituna,_ saying _But we're cool, right?_

_Of course I remember this feeling._

But...

Your thoughts are sluggish, reluctant to slide against one another, and you find yourself cursing the relief you feel when a familiar voice says, "Kanny?"

Even with her smile so hesitant and her face so wary, sometimes Porrim appears every bit as cheering as she'd like to be; you look up from where you sit on the stairs of the Prospit-Derse bridge, curled up against the banisters, and offer her a little smile of your own. If her expression betrays surprise at this, you know it should not sting.

_I haven't been very kind to her. I couldn't be._

"How goes the afterlife, Porrim?" you murmur, drawing a preposterous amount of comfort from her cozy familiarity, from the well-remembered folds of her favorite dress and the way it falls around her bent knees as she sits beside you. Despite your long-standing reluctance to let her touch you, in your present state of mind it's all you can do to remain still and not slump against her bare shoulder, no better than the wiggler that she so determinedly takes you for.

You try to clutch the ticking at your wrist but it offers you no solace.

Porrim leans back against the stairs, supporting her slim torso by the elbows as she gazes skyward. "I've been surviving, for the most part. Thank you for your concern." None of you have had irises for a very long time, but you feel her eyes shift to you nonetheless. "I suppose that's more than you can say, though?"

"What do you mean?" Your voice sounds paper-thin. "Why does everybody seem to be laboring under the delusion that I'm upset in some way?" _That's not quite what Cronus said, but it was close enough..._

"_If anything, you look happier", _he'd said. _"He's gone—Eridan's gone."_

_Karkat..._

"I'm perfectly alright, you know", you mumble, making no effort to disguise your petulance. "I've just been a bit quieter than usual, and that seems to be doing everyone good."

You shouldn't be feeling this at all.

"Whether or not it's a relief for us is a different issue", Porrim says gently. "Something fairly momentous must have happened for you to clam up like this." _Momentous?_ "Are you capable of talking about it at all?"

_Momentous... I shouldn't be feeling this, I..._

"I saw you talking to Latula some time ago", you hear yourself say, decibels away from a whisper. It is only much later that you wonder why, in your haste to escape the horrifyingly familiar ache in your chest, even Latula seemed like a good choice of subject.

"Kankri."

_Why can't I stand you?_ You raise your eyes to hers at last, offering acknowledgment—and some gratitude—that she has dropped the nickname for now. "What is it?"

_Why is everyone determined to find something wrong with me?_

"Are you really still brooding because of Latula?"

_How am I supposed to answer that?_

"No", you spit at her before the thought has even fully formed in your head, and it's immediately too late to stop, too late to do anything but watch the crease between her brows deepen as you rail on. "This isn't about Latula, and I'd appreciate it if you refrained from making such assumptions in the future, since it reflects poorly on those of us who have a congenital propensity for quiet reflection upon any issues that may be troubling us at the moment"—the crack in your voice is sudden but not unexpected—"which I assure you I have none of presently—and is counterproductive to the healthy development of young trolls, leading similarly inclined people to suppress their—"

"No indeed", Porrim cuts in dryly; your increasingly blurry vision shows the rise and fall of her ample chest, the weariest of sighs. _When did my eyes begin to water? Why are they watering?_ "Thank you for reminding me not to try, Kanny. I'm out."

_Oh god, I..._

It's gone, whatever semblance of discipline you tacked onto your mind and heart and tongue with Karkat's unceremonious arrival in your existence is now gone. You are right back where you started, you know now... alone and bewildered and weary and—

Fleeing from something that you haven't felt since Karkat and most certainly shouldn't be feeling _because _of Karkat—

_Porrim, I'm sorry...?_

As though from a great distance, you see her narrow back retreat, the glow beneath her skin flickering on for one irate second before dimming again. You lower your eyes, then shut them painfully tight against tears that you had not known you could shed.

_I'm such a fool..._

_Just like that, I'm feeling empty again._

oOo

**I have _way_ too much to say on the subject of Kankri being accustomed to waiting for people who excuse themselves from his lectures and then never come back, but I'll hold my tongue.**

**Oh, and ALL the bonus points if you can guess why the leaves were rustling.**


	7. Seven

_Seven_

oOo

A knot sits in your stomach and stiffness on your shoulders, but your lips have the faintest of smiles on them as Karkat's eyes—open this time and entirely present—gaze at something you cannot see.

"How's the watch working out for you?"

"Very well", you reply immediately, and the knot tightens. "Thank you so much. It—it's certainly proving to be a valuable possession, seeing as I'm now beginning to reacquaint myself with the flow of time as it would pass for me in the world of the living. It—yes, it's working out just great."

_Now I know only too well how much time passes here between your visits._

_I was a fool to think that anything I did would end happily..._

"How is your life on the meteor, Karkat?" you murmur. "How are the humans?"

He scowls in response, and maybe you are imagining things, but there is no real annoyance behind it. Maybe you have been imagining it all along, but his scowls—his jibes, his loud voice, his angry glare—now seem more like an expression of his personality than responses to any situation.

_I'm nothing if not imaginative,_ you think wryly, as Karkat shrugs. "Uneventful as always. Exhausting too, in a sense, since everyone kind of just does their own thing... I mean, Strider's got Terezi, Kanaya's got Rose, Gamzee is too insane for me to actually enjoy his company even to the—the negligible extent that I once did—" he breaks off briefly and his eyes flit to you for a heartbeat. "There's the mayor, I guess, but you can't really talk to him, so. It's largely just me by by own loathsome self."

"About the human named Strider", you ask tentatively, watching his face with care, "what's he like?" _Is he like Mituna, I wonder... or rather, like the Mituna we knew?_

Karkat raises a hand to the back of his head, absently raking at the hair that riots there. "He's a bilious stone-faced excrescence from the load gaper of the horrorterrors' community slum. Fucking insecure asshole literally never takes off those shades either, and they're not even particularly good shades, if anything they're lamer than a three-legged barkfiend and useless to boot in the darkness of the meteor. It's a wonder he can see where he's going, pretentious little..."

The knot in your stomach loosens just a little. _He feels that way too, does he..._

"...but for all that, yeah, I can't say I hate him or anything", he finishes, more more quietly than he had started. "No point putting all your energy into hating someone who couldn't give less of a fuck."

_Oh._ That's... more than you can say.

It tightens again, pulsating. "You have a bigger heart than I do." _Not that I didn't already know that, I suppose._

"_It's so much easier to care for them", you said. Then why do I find it easier to hate?_

You say none of these things. What you say is, "Does the same go for loving, then? Is there really no point in loving someone who couldn't give—couldn't be bothered to care?"

And in that miserable moment, you realize that you do not know whom you are talking about.

"You make hate and pity sound like they work the same way, but they don't", said Karkat. "If you really 'loved' someone—which is usually just an obnoxious way of saying you pity them; don't fucking kid me, we don't really fall in 'love' like in stupid human books and rom-coms with their idealistic single-quadrant bullshit—you'd let them be happy without it having to interfere with your own peace of mind. If their happiness is detrimental to yours in any way, regardless of their stupid quadrant decisions, you're just being a bulgesucking shitstain who can't label their feelings right."

_Then I suppose the only thing that I am sure of is that I'm a bulgesucking shitstain._

_I shouldn't be feeling this—_

"I'm no good with my feelings, Karkat", you mumble, utterly defeated. "It takes me so long to figure out and accept how I feel that by the time I am ready to act on them the world has moved on and I am left to deal with the consequences of stirring myself up too late."

He snorts. "Can't help you with that. Even if I was any better at dealing with my own fucked-up head, it's not something you can be helped with. At some point you just have to grow a pair of globes and get with the times."

_But I can't. I can't be feeling. I shouldn't be feeling at all._

_If only I could talk to someone besides you, maybe I wouldn't feel the need to cling to you like this... maybe..._

"I need to get away from the people I call my friends", you say into the bony hardness of your knees. You have no recollection of curling up into a ball, but like this you can almost forget about the gnawing tension in your stomach and the throbbing of your stupid, stupid heart.

"I can't stand them any more, and I can't stand myself when I talk to them, and I... god, it's been so long..."

_I've been so alone, and I..._

"Kankri, I know." You raise your eyes to meet his, which are looking at you for a change with frightening intensity and an emotion that you fail to place. "I can't understand what it's like to feel the way that I have for possibly millions of sweeps, but... I know. Have you ever been to other parts of this memory?"

You shake your head blankly and mutter, "I never really had reason to venture beyond this place."

_You won't understand what that means, which is okay._

"Come with me."

"Eh?"

"Stand up and come with me. There's a place around here you should probably see. It'll do you some good." He's still gazing at you. You still cannot recognize the look in his eyes. Stubborn curiosity shutters out everything else he might be thinking like a fine mesh.

"I..." _I what?_

"What is it?" he grumbles, already getting to his feet and brushing himself off. Your eyes linger on the bits of grass falling from his pants with some hesitation.

"But, well... You found this place and weren't very happy to see me here. Why would you want to show me something that you can keep to yourself?" _Why... why would you willingly keep me around when I'm..._

"Because you need it", he snaps. He's _still_ not looking away; when was the last time he looked at you for so long?

"But—" you begin, then close your mouth. _But what? What do I want to hear?_

"And because your presence doesn't bother me like it did, I suppose."

_...Oh._

And the knot has never felt so loose, so close to negligible.

"Kankri, for Suff's sake, are you going to come or—"

"Yes", you say quietly as you let go of your knees, which had begun to press into your chest, adding to the ache that already sobs there like a cramp within a muscle. _So that's what I wanted to hear..._

_...that my waiting for you does not keep you away._

oOo

Trees stretch overhead from one bank of the brook to the other, branches tangling like laced fingers, like hands trying to touch. It's barely wider than a trickle, but it glimmers over smooth round pebbles in the early morning sunrays as its narrow path snakes away to you cannot see where.

Not even the ticking of your watch can keep all of time from stopping for a moment.

_This..._ Does Karkat know, can he possibly know how your heart leaps at the sight before you?

Did he know of the uncontrollable smile that now tickles your lips? Is that why he brought you here? As your eyes dart from one liquid sunspot to another and grow ever wider, he stirs beside you and lets out a soft cough, probably seeking comment, but you have no answer except the look on your face. Your throat feels too tight to speak; your legs, unsteady.

_It's... flowing. The water's flowing. Something is moving in this forest after all._

_I..._

Your voice cracks mid-sentence, mid-word, as you finally manage to ask, "How did you know I would—?"

"I don't know?" you feel, more than see, his nonchalant shrug. "That place back there is nice, but it's so static—nothing moves or changes, it's just stuck that way. I figured you'd like some place a little more... well, alive."

"Hey", you say, but your voice sounds near unrecognizable, carrying your words on a breath of the purest euphoria you have felt in an untold amount of time. "Hey", you say—or do you laugh?—"that's discriminatory towards the dead."

Gray eyes that have not quite begun to show their red slide your way with an angry gleam, which fades immediately on seeing that, after you care not how many sweeps and aeons and bewildered tears, every nerve in your body is humming with silent, glorious laughter.

_I don't even know what I should feel any more, so why not laugh?_

He does not join in, but a corner of his mouth twitches upwards. "Fancy seeing you so happy. It feels fucking surreal, you know that?"

_It is surreal._

"I'm sorry", you say automatically, even as your mirth recedes into the ghost of a smile that you are sure will not leave your face for some time. "This place is perfect and I... I'm grateful to you." _My very feelings are surreal._ "I'm just... really grateful, I..."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. Calm down before you shake the skin off your bones." You are painfully glad for the interruption; your eyes have begun to prickle again, much to your horror.

_Why do I need to feel like this, Karkat?_

But instead, you ask, "Why are you kind to me, Karkat?"

He's looking at the water now, eyes teasing its gentle bends among the grass with something that you swear is determined obstinacy. "I'd call that a stupid question, but I can't really give you an answer. Just sit the fuck down and enjoy my infesting your time while you can, since you can actually tolerate me."

_Was I really expecting an answer, anyway?_ "I'm sorry", you say, and in that moment you mean it for reasons that you cannot know yet. _It's painful... but wonderful._

_I shouldn't question wonderful things. I won't question you. _You will go where the wild throbbing ache in your heart leads you, even if it is to the first truly _wonderful_ thing that has happened to you in life or death.

Even if it leads to Karkat, you...

"I'm just a fool", you mumble through a different sort of laughter.

There is no scowl on his face as he replies, "So am I."


	8. Eight

_Eight_

oOo

The tree cover gives way only in odd patches where pale sunlight strains through the foliage. It's just thick enough that the two of you can lie back on the bank as it slopes gently towards the whispering water, his face turned to the branches overhead and your face turned—ever so slightly—to his.

"This is even better than I thought it would be, to tell you the truth", Karkat says meditatively, eyes half shut. "I'd only gotten one quick look before I brought you here, didn't have time to—"

His sentence dies away unexpectedly and he seems to bristle a little at your inquiring look. "It's nothing."

_Didn't have time to...?_

"When did you find this place, anyway?" you murmur, too warm and comfortable to stir up much curiosity. Your limbs are more relaxed than they have been since you saw him last, since you last relinquished your hold over your wayward tongue and saw the tired softness in Porrim's eyes harden a little more. _Since I realized how empty I was feeling._

_I still don't know why._

_I shouldn't think. I shouldn't question._

"I kinda just stumbled across it while trying to find my way to the place where—the other place, I guess." Something in his voice sounds oddly restrained. "The meteor's usual entry point lies somewhere on the other side of this stream, but this memory is fucking _enormous_. Whoever's it is, they knew the place like the inside of their nook."

It is certainly not the first time you have wondered whom this forest could belong to. "It's a pity you have to walk so far, though."

"That's not actually a problem", says Karkat. One of his arms is tucked beneath his head, cushioning it, and for one second—just one tick of the watch against the pulse at your wrist—you are visited by a fleeting but incredibly vivid image of your own arm there in place of his.

_What—_

"I mean, the meteor is big and everything, but we can't walk all over it because the labs and shit are all stuffed in one corner—is it possible to have corners on a vaguely spherical object? Because it has fucking corners—so it's not really a big space. These bubbles are actually something of a break for me, I'd go stir-crazy without them." After a pause, he snorts and adds, "Ironically enough."

His face is stubbornly devoid of expression again, so you ask, "Why ironically?"

"It's just—" he breaks off abruptly and rolls his eyes at the trees in a manner that strongly reminds you of Porrim. "Nope, fuck this. I'll probably tell you later when I have more energy. I should be going in a while anyway."

_Ah..._

_Well, he'd have to leave at some point, _you think,but it does nothing to lighten the sudden heaviness you feel in your chest. _Why am I even trying to question this? Don't I know what it is by now?_

_Maybe not, but... I don't want you to go. _

It hurts a little to even allow the words to form in your mind, but...

_Don't go._

"Are you insane? Well, you are, but—more insane than the rest, I mean. I do need to get back to the meteor and my friends some time before I lose the entry point for fuck knows how long. I'm not about to let myself get stuck in the afterlife."

_Did I just say that out loud? _"No, it's alright, it's perfectly fine!" you choke through a mortified blush. "I didn't mean that, I was just—I'm sorry—I just—aren't we friends too?"

Your voice flies into a different octave altogether with the last question, something that you had never intended to ask; you slam a trembling arm across your face, shielding it from your ancestor's eyes, cursing your thoughts and your ability to speak and the burning of your cheeks that could set the forest on fire. When you speak again to push out a terrified apology, it is little more than a squeak.

_My ghost is going to die too. At long last. All this time and it's going to die of sheer embarrassment._

Then you realize that you no longer want to die.

Sinking in your thoughts again, you do not see the truculence in Karkat's eyes soften a little. You do, however, feel the warmth of the hand around your wrist; it tugs briefly, as though trying to pull your arm away, and there is no way on Alternia or Beforus that he cannot feel your stupid heart racing.

_What an idiot I am._

"There's no need for that", you hear over the pounding of your blood in your veins. "Kankri. Stop that."

As you force yourself to relax, to try and relinquish the trembling in your very bones, your arm falls away from your face and the hand releases your wrist, leaving an old yet familiar tingling in its wake. Karkat is kneeling over you now, his face not very far from yours—which you know must now be a shade of red rivaling that of your sweater—and his eyes are as unreadable as ever.

"We're friends", he says quietly. "There's no point in you worrying about that." With his next word, you hear all previous restraint melt away as though in a deep flame. "Here."

And his arms around you take you unawares. Brief as it is, the hug lasts for three bewildered heartbeats and one startled, bitten-down gasp and for that moment, just that moment, you have lost all sense of time again.

He tightens his embrace, and you are nothing but rushing blood and forgotten breaths and flailing heart.

"God damn, I don't know what to do with you", he mutters against your neck, the words hot enough to brand your skin. "Hang in there, you maddeningly eloquent fuck."

_I'm—_

"I'm far from eloquent", you say dazedly as he lets go of you and you slump back to the grass with little grace. _Words escape my control so easily... I can't even think straight, much less talk straight... Especially around you..._

_Karkat..._

Why must your heart beat so fast?

He's on his feet now, but he glances down at you with something that you can believe is amusement. "You're eloquent enough."

_I'm a fool._

You do not watch him step across the narrow stream with ease before disappearing into the trees on the opposite bank; curled up on your side, fighting to hold on to the warmth of his arms, you shield both head and heart and pray that you will be alright this time. _What else is there to do?_

_I'm a fool._

And anyway... if you close your eyes like this, you can also fool yourself that he looked back at least once.

oOo

"Chief, ya know something..."

The two of you have been sitting in relatively comfortable quiet for some time now, so it is with faint displeasure that you glance at Cronus. "I suppose I will know once you tell me."

You can hear a merry laugh not so far away, sliding between the strange gritty noise that only memory tells you is the grind of a skateboard... _How childlike,_ you think absent-mindedly. Latula's fascination with her wheeled toy is one thing you have never been able to understand, not even when—

_Not even when—?_

But Cronus' voice cuts into your thoughts and you are almost relieved. "I was kinda just roamin' around the other day, thinkin' about my music... yanno, doing my own thing, and I..."

The silence following the sudden dwindling of his sentence is so long that you give him another look, this one significantly more impatient. "And you what?" you prompt baldly, while wondering just why you want to return to the insistent hum of your mind, and why it seems so much less daunting now.

"I ran into another Eridan", he tells you. Everything about him is drooping, even his fins.

"...Ah." _What do I say to you?_

"He's like my Eridan on the outside, but... kinda different, ya know? I can't really explain it like pointin' out the glasses or the god tier outfit. He's not..."

"I understand", you say dully, because you do. You have seen a few alternate timeline versions of your own ancestor roaming these bubbles. "It's fine. So what did you do on meeting him?"

"Come on, Tunababe! Ride that bad boy all the way down! I'll catch you!"

_Ah, here's the ache, but..._

"I said hi." He's looking down at his knees now. "So did he. I guess that's end a that."

_...but it's not... it's not...?_

And Karkat's face floods your mind, as vividly imprinted upon every sense as if he were right before you, just as you clear your throat and mumble, "I'm sorry. While I admit I am just a little surprised to find that you cared so much, I..." _I can't imagine what I would—_ "I'm sorry he's gone. ...Do let me know if this loss on your part has cause you to develop new triggers, so I will remember to notify you in the future when our conversations turn to relevant issues..."

"Kankri", Cronus hedges out, his voice halfway between growl and groan, "no triggers. I'm cool. Well, not cool, but no triggers."

"If you insist", you say huffily. "I was only trying to ensure your comfort." For a split second—you know because the tick of your watch says so—you are visited by the mad urge to tell him everything. _From the beginning... from the first time I spoke to Karkat and made him despise me so, to..._

_To...?_

_From the beginning... but there has to be an end, too..._ Where does your story end? Despite the curiously inoffensive clench of your gut and the sedate, subdued pace of your thoughts, you cannot think of the end just yet. _I don't even want to think of the middle... I'm only just starting..._

_Only just starting to make a fool of myself all over again..._

Because this is not the first time any of this has happened; you know that only too well now. And yet—

_Why is my heart so light?_

_Give me a stone and I'd kick it. If I were near the stream, I'd probably try to swim in it._ Latula laughs on and your mind's eye can see the swish and flip of her hair streaming out behind her, the practiced bend of her elbows, the taper of her fingertips. You see those elbows bend around Mituna, those fingertips sink into the wild jumble of his hair, and a shiver of the warmth that Karkat left on your skin dances flame-like down your spine.

_Why is the world so bright?_

"_If anything, you look happier",_ Cronus had said, and his own unhappiness had twisted into a look that said he knew.

The smile that plays around your lips is as frightened as it is glad. _I understand now... Of course you would know, Cronus._

_Fool that I am... a fool all over again..._

_Why is the world so bright?_

oOo

**(◡_◡) Friendly reminder that  
-Nepeta's feelings towards Karkat were only evident when explicitly mentioned in-story  
-Karkat still figured it out without her saying anything  
-Kankri is, to say the least, already doing a worse job of keeping it under wraps  
This should be fun (ʘuʘ)**


	9. Nine

_Nine_

oOo

She's so animated, so visibly delighted when allowed to talk like this... Even her glasses seem to shine a little with the sheer energy of her words, you think as you watch her lips move, considerable fascination mixed in with your disinterest in what she's actually saying. You know there was a time not long ago when your throat would have been prickling by now with words of your own, bursting to talk over her, to engage in some form of friendly—_friendly, really?—_rivalry with the only person you know who talks as much as you used to.

But this is now, and you are only half listening to Aranea Serket as she prattles on.

"...and really, it's been quite the challenge to find anyone even willing to hear me out when I mention wanting to take a different course of action, much lest assist me in my efforts, so I'm grateful that you think it worth your while..."

"Not at all", you say immediately. "If I could help, the pleasure is all mine. While I am not really willing to be of more active use to you in your... quest... I suppose lending you an ear is not entirely beyond my capability."

Her face falls only briefly as you tell her what she must have known from the start—that listening to her is about as far as you will go. But it's a hard fall.

"Are you certain of your decision, Kankri?" You fail to ignore the soft vexation in her voice and stifle a sigh.

"Yes, Aranea. If it makes you feel better, I am sorry. In any case I would surely be nothing short of useless to you in this sort of quest." _I could hardly even make it through Sburb. We messed up so badly, all of us... How do I help you search for a cherub in the endless dream bubbles?_

And you are not going to lie to yourself... Now that your own tongue has grown somewhat sedate, her incessant talking is nothing short of harsh on the ears. _Of course, that makes me wonder what I must have been like back when I found nothing wrong with talking just as much as her, if not more, but..._

But there's no need to think back on that.

_That was..._

Her mouth twitches irately. "It would be better than having no one at all." _...that was before Karkat._

"I know", you hear yourself say; is it in reply to Aranea or yourself? "But better doesn't always mean a happier ending." You are saved from having to explain what you meant—_how could I, anyway?—_by the shift of her eyes to something over your shoulder and a small smile.

_Someone._

"Fancy seeing you around, Porrim!"

_Oh, god..._

There is no stopping the way your shoulders stiffen. Before you can decide which way to go, what to say, how to excuse yourself—because you know you cannot easily stand within five feet of Porrim at this moment—she's stepped around you with a rustle of her dress and a bounce of her hair. "Nice to see you too, Aranea. How have things been?

"Probably not as good as they could be", says Aranea with an exasperated glance at you; her voice has dropped, leaving it grittier and somehow less comfortable. It means nothing to you.

_I stopped trying to keep track of her quadrants way back when we were still alive._

But, to your dismay, the thought that she might open up her pale quadrant just as easily as the other three does not fail to sting. And you curse yourself and try to be as quiet as possible when you say, "Hello, Porrim."

It's too late. It's already over. The five-second silence between your faces tinges you with red.

"How have you been, Kanny?" And the damage has been done; her voice flows, searing, from the curve of her lip ring to your clenched fists as they twitch at your sides. For once, you can see the end of this conversation only too well, and all you can do is pray that you will walk away before she does.

_Kanny._

"Maybe I don't need to tell you."

oOo

By the time you see him, you have already heard him—his inelegant footfalls on dry twigs that snap underfoot with every breath you take. And you have long given up even attempting to hide the occasional shiver that traces your back. _I'm not afraid of what he'll say._

_I'm just_

_a fool._

You are hugging your knees to stay warm when he approaches you, but it only makes your bare arms that much more prominent. Were you really expecting him not to raise an eyebrow?

"What's with not wearing that infernal sweater today?" he asks the instant he's within earshot. You peep wretchedly up at him from behind the jumble of your hair, which is more tousled than usual. You had not thought to so much as run your fingers through it after pulling the turtleneck over your head.

"I thought I'd let you see what my long pants are really like", you say feebly, and your smile is not forced. The relief you feel on seeing Karkat is no longer the crashing liquid fatigue that you were once overwhelmed with, but you doubt his face will ever fail to send a little spark through your veins. "They're not as bad as you seemed to think. I don't know what Meenah told you about them, but..."

Already he's kneeling before you, head tilted, eyes boring into yours; thankful as you are for his gaze, it's hard not to let your heart sink.

"You gonna tell me the reason or not?"

"That really is the reason, though." _Why am I doing this?_ "Look, they're so much nicer than people say... really comfortable, too. It just saves a lot of trouble when you have only one piece of clothing to worry about instead of two. I thought you'd—" _Why am I doing this?_

"Oh, for fuck's sake!"

Numb with hollow anger, the dull thud of your back hitting the tree behind you is more heard than felt. Your nerves seem to have gathered in your shoulders, where his hands pin you in place, and your face as it heats beneath his questioning glare. Beneath _his_ face. _To think... a face that looks so much like mine is the biggest change I have embraced in millennia._

Surely you feel as cold to him as he feels warm to you.

"Did someone take it from you? Was it stolen?"

"What?" you ask blankly. _Is that what you're worrying about? Worrying? _"No, it's nothing like that. I just decided not to wear it. I—got tired of wearing the same thing this whole time, to tell you the truth." _Why am I doing this?_

His hands remain firm on either shoulder. "I'm a lot of things, and stupid may be one of them, sure, but I'm touching you right now. Your skin is fucking freezing." _Why do your eyes burn like this?_

"I'm—I'm really not cold." And in that moment, you are not lying.

There is very little anger on his face, despite the glower, as he lowers his face until you are almost nose to nose and repeats—quietly this time—"Kankri, did someone take your sweater?"

"Why do you think I'm being targeted?" you find yourself asking, inexplicably scratched by his assumption. "I know they call me things and don't particularly enjoy my company, but they wouldn't stoop to outright bullying. I can't even begin to imagine how many triggers I would need to tag—but no, if you really must know, well... Porrim made the sweater for me, and I had to—return it to her for a while."

His expression speaks of unsettling skepticism. Your stomach grows a little colder. _That wasn't a lie._

"She thought it was time she had it cleaned or something", you mutter. _But this is._

Your skin is brimming with heat where he gripped your shoulders long after he's let you go. Long after he slumps wearily beside you, looking away at last, and sighs, "Apologize to Porrim."

"How'd you know?" you blurt out. _Why am I doing this?_

He snorts. "You're not much of a liar, but I'll admit I took a lucky guess. So is that what happened? You snapped at her and she got mad and demanded that you give back the sweater?"

Some of the tautness in your limbs dissipates. _Maybe I'm not that transparent after all._

_Maybe I can hide what's important for as long as I need to..._

"Not quite", you mumble into your knees, trying your hardest to ignore the nauseating mix of relief and guilt that clouds your chest. "Well, you're close, but... she'd never have asked for the sweater. That was my fault. I'm an idiot."

_A fool, to be precise._

"I'm just tired of her... I'm tired of everyone." You hope the pause is long enough that you sound offhand when you add, "Well, except you."

"No shit", he says dryly. "I'm not about to fucking knit you a new sweater though, you know. Are you planning to apologize to her or not?"

You shake your head, feeling glum. "Not anytime soon, I'm afraid. It's cold, but I suppose I deserve to freeze for a while. I don't know what I'd even say to her, we were both so angry..."

_Oh, he's... he's looking at me again._

"Is it really that cold with the sweater off?" he asks at last, and his eyes are as warm as the rest of him.

There is nothing you can say except a glib "Not as much as you seem to think. I can manage, honestly. I just need to get used to it. I spent an awful lot of time without the sweater too, after all... it shouldn't be hard to return to that..."

You are cut off by an impatient shuffle, a scowl, and an arm around your shoulders. Then the beat of your heart drowns out what's left, and you let your head drop to your knees just in time to hide the dazed blush that's already simmering there.

But now you cannot see the look on his face when he snaps, "You spent an awful lot of time alone, too. Just because something's easy to get used to doesn't make it the best option."

_I never did get used to being alone, but... I never was anything _but_ alone until now. I'm not alone now, am I?_

You do not ask him that.

"Are you going to make me apologize to her?" you whisper.

His sigh leaves a tepid breeze on your own arms. "If I could I probably would, but... It's not like I'm any better at apologizing to people. So I can't. Stay mad at her. Stay half-naked except for those stupid pants. But there's no point in sitting around shivering like a pants-shitting grub while you try to get your guts back into your food barrel."

It's hard not to lean into his touch. It really is.

"But I'll have to be cold again at some point, won't I...? You'll go back to your meteor and I'll have to—" _I'll be back to waiting. I always come back to waiting._ "I should try and get used to it."

"Actually, it's my dreamself here this time."

You look up sharply. Karkat's eyes are nowhere near yours. They stare listlessly at the stream as you try to think of something to say.

"There's no need to give me that look. You keep talking about how much everything sucks until I'm left wondering if there's anything left to suck out of the straw that happens to be the putrid asshole of this game. This way I don't really have to leave for quite a while—well, unless someone wakes me up, which I don't think is likely. ...I don't talk much to anyone on the meteor these days, you know."

_I know._ _It's not just me who's been lonely, is it?_

Maybe nothing needs to be said. He's warm and just as alone as you are and he feels delightful against you.

_Even if it's just one more hour, two more hours..._

_When did I stop clinging to the change you brought and start clinging to you instead?_

"What happens if I never talk to Porrim after this?" you laugh softly, quite unable to suppress the image of his arms fully around you again, keeping you warm forever. There is little surprise mixed with the savage comfort that the thought brings.

Karkat shrugs. "I'd probably get the sweater back for you."

_I'm..._ "Am I that pitiable?" You do not sound resentful, but he gives you a quick look nonetheless. _Still warm. Always warm._

_Karkat..._

"You're just as big a fool as I am", he mutters, and turns away again.


	10. Ten

_Ten_

oOo

**I apologize in advance now please leave me to die**

oOo

The ache in your chest is a little different than usual.

"Always fussing, too", he's saying. "But I guess I wouldn't have it any other way in the end. That's just how she is. That's how _I_ am. It wouldn't really work any other way." And sure enough, his voice carries none of its usual grainy irritation; despite his earlier complaints, it sounds nothing short of affectionate when he speaks of her. _Of his Maryam._

_Even without trying, he likes Kanaya far better than I will ever like Porrim._

"And you're still not moirails?" you ask mildly, already aware of the answer and equally aware that you and Porrim have never been in a formal moirallegiance either. _For good reasons too, it would seem._

He raises an eyebrow. "No, we're not. I've told you. Gamzee's my moirail." After a slight pause, he adds, "I pretty much have to be his moirail at this point, to tell you the truth." The implication, though obvious in hindsight, takes you a moment to catch.

_What do I know about pale tension?_ You try to shrug and then realize—though had you ever forgotten?—that his arm is still around your shoulders. You have long stopped feeling cold.

"I don't—I find it hard to comprehend the way your society used to function", you say with ill-disguised reluctance. This has been a sore spot with you for some time now. "Alternian culture was so violent, so blatantly disrespectful of the needs of the individual... It's a wonder your people survived for as long as they did, for that matter..."

He rolls his eyes and says, "It wasn't half as bad as it sounds. We had to learn how to defend ourselves and attack others almost from the moment we were hatched—easy enough to get around once we had that down."

You try to imagine Karkat emerging from the caverns with his fists up, already covered in the blood of a monster or two and raring to go. The image feels surreal enough to tickle until you realize, with a nauseating jolt, that that might have been exactly what happened.

"And your blood?" you ask quietly. "Didn't that pose an obstacle for you?"

_My own blood has been a source of such incredible frustration..._

"I had a lusus", he says, eyes lowered to the ground now. "I had a hive and food and everything I needed to survive. If anyone asked about my blood color, I just didn't tell them. It was as simple as that. As long as I could avoid being culled, it was alright."

"That's more than I can say", you murmur, but for once you are not willing to speak for long on this matter, despite his inquiring eyes. "The term 'culling' had a somewhat less life-threatening meaning in our time, but yes, it happened to me." There's a pause in which you search wildly for something, anything to say that might change the subject, even if marginally. "Rufioh would have been culled too if he hadn't run away. Latula's inability to smell wasn't apparent at the time, but... yes, eventually she would have been slated for culling as well." _Just... don't ask about me._

"Just because she couldn't smell?" Karkat seems on the verge of saying something more scathing, but backtracks before your raised eyebrow. "I don't—I'm not trying to make her disability into a non-issue. It just seems fucking stupid to me that adults on Beforus would see a serious disadvantage in what's basically a permanent stuffy nose."

"She has problems to deal with that we, having been gifted the privilege of a sense of smell since pupation, cannot comprehend", you say stiffly. "If not in the absolute magnitude of her disadvantage, then the emotional stigma of being eligible for culling certainly puts her on par with the rest. ...That was one of the reasons we began talking, so you know."

Karkat's eyes—still clear gray with no hint of red—are piercing, inquisitive.

"Is that why you grew to pity her then? You bonded over the likelihood of being culled?"

"What do you mean?" _Pity?_ "If anything, the way she shoulders her burden without letting it impede her endeavors to excel whatever she sees fit—no matter how immature the pursuit—is admirable." _Pity...? _Is it pity that dictates your heart now?

"But you say you have flushed feelings for her", he insists. "That's how redrom works. It's based on pity."

_Is that how it works, really? Pity is..._

_It's not pity that I feel for..._

"But"—and you hear yourself speak in that heedless high octave which tells you to shut your mouth before you say too much—"but I don't pity—" _What am I saying?_

You stop just in time;unnoticed, his eyebrow climbs a little. "You don't pity Latula, is that what you're saying?" Your nod is numb, immediate. "Nah, I'm pretty sure you do somewhere or the other. Maybe in a way that you don't recognize as pity."

_...you._

_It's really happened, hasn't it?_

"No, you misunderstand." You are suddenly very conscious of his arm on your bare skin. "I don't pity Latula. ...I don't—I don't think I'm flushed for her at all right now, I..." _It's not Latula that I..._

_What am I __doing__?_

"I don't know", you say faintly, and by the time you've registered all that your words imply, there's nothing left to feel but a familiar sleepy relief. _It's really happened. I knew it was going to happen and now it's happened all over again and I don't know what to do._

_I'm no less of a fool than I was the first time._

You are the first to turn away, your stare hard and unmoving on the sun-washed stream. _For how long did I intend to to hid__e __anyway?_

"Would you like to talk about something else, Karkat?"

"Not just yet, no."

You look back at him, and his eyes have never left you.

"Our romance is built around either hate or pity", he says in a voice that is nothing if not unsteady. "If your feelings are neither one nor the other, where does that leave you? There's no fifth quadrant, you know." His arm around you, his body against yours; both surging with lonely red blood and bewilderment and raw curiosity that you will never be able to deflect. Curiosity that, in all honesty, you do not want to deflect.

"You..." Your voice breaks mid-word; you press on anyway, painfully aware of your lips and teeth and tongue and every shaky syllable you push out from the depths of your foolish heart. "You keep talking about romance, but... never about love."

_What am I doing?_

And then he does look away at last. But there is no mistaking the soft tinge of color that's sprung to his cheeks.

"You should know by now that 'love' isn't all it's cracked up to be, numbnuts."

_What a fool I am._

"I do know", you laugh. _Laugh._ Surely the dry ripple in your voice can be nothing but laughter? "I'd be surprised if anyone knew that better than I do. But..." _But here I am, still... waiting and hoping and thinking until I can take it no longer..._

_What am I going to do?_

It takes you some time to notice that your shaking is not because of the cold. Even longer to realize that you are not laughing at all. The warmth on your face is tears.

You make no move to brush them away.

"You've seen what a fool I am," you mumble to your kneecaps. "Do you hate me?" _Please understand. Please. Please tell me your heart's beating as fast as mine. _

After a nauseously long pause, he stirs a little and the arm on your shoulders falls away; your resulting shiver skates through your tears, forcing you to choke down a single terrified sob as you hug your knees tighter. "Remember what I once told you?" he asks softly. "I told you that I don't like hating people. It's much easier to love them."

You shake your head before lowering it to your knees, defeated and weary. "That's not how I remember it. You said 'care for them', not love them. You said..." _Much later, but you did once say that..._ "love is usually just an obnoxious word for pity."

"Usually, sure", he snaps. "Is this a fucking usual occurrence for you? And hey—the way I see it, caring is just a way to 'love' without bringing in the clusterfuck of quadrants to mess shit up." Is that a hand on your arm? You clench your eyes shut and try to bring yourself to shrug it off. You cannot. The heartbeat that travels onto your skin is faint and sweaty and anything but calm.

"Then what are you going to do now?" You have never felt quite so wretched. "I don't understand what it is that you want to do." _I don't understand what you're thinking. I don't know what I'm saying. What am I going to do?_

"What do _you _want me to do?"

_I don't know, Karkat, I don't know..._ But you do know this much. After all, knowing what you want him to do is what makes you such a fool, isn't it?

_It's now or never._ Never looking up from the ball you've curled into, you whisper, "I've lost control of my heart." _Again._ "It's idiotic and reckless and—maybe somewhat broken—but it's not confused. I know what I've lost it to—whom I've lost it to, rather."

"What do you want me to do, Kankri?" he repeats, and this time there is no way to unhear the tremble in that voice.

"I want you to take care of it", you say. _Please._ "P-please."

_I'm a fool..._

But his arms are now around you again before you can begin to cry in earnest—not one but both of them. Tighter and warmer than ever. Pulling you out of yourself until finally, _finally,_ something in your tense limbs and flailing breath gives way and you are little more than one pounding heart pressed against his.

"What's that?" His voice is so close to your ear now... "You want me to take care of your heart?"

There's nothing more to be said; nothing more you _can_ say. You nod numbly into the crook of his neck, the miserable heat of your own tear-streaked face swirling in the darkness behind your eyelids, causing you to redden further.

The thought that his blood is every bit as red as yours floats hazily across your mind. Your chest still aches.

"I'm sorry", you mumble, if only to poke at the tight stillness around you that no whispering stream can pierce.

Why does he sound so gruff when he speaks at last? "If you're—if you're really sorry, you can follow that shit up by doing me a favor."

"A favor?" you ask dazedly; he's warm and quiet around you and he's holding you so close... so very close... but the knot in your stomach is still far from loose, your conversation anything but resolved. "What is it?"

"I can't handle two hearts at once."

Not even the ticking of your watch can be heard in the silence that follows.

"If I'm taking care of yours", he then says, tilting your head up into a fiery gaze that_—for once, even if it's just this once—_hides absolutely nothing, "you'd better fucking take care of mine."

And something in those unveiled eyes says, _you're not the only fool here._

_Fool that I am, what am I going to do?_

With your foreheads gently touching and his breath hot against your lips, he asks you, "Think you can manage that, Kankri?"

_Fools that we are, what are we going to do?_

The only thing there is to do. "Yes", you say. "I know I can."


	11. Eleven

_Eleven_

oOo

Cronus says nothing for the first half hour or so that the two of you sit side by side, while the faint babble of the others' various activites in the distance wafts around your shared silence, inoffensive and strangely content. Then he turns to you with an expression that you do not care to glance at and says flatly, "Spit it out."

You cannot bring yourself to resist a smile. "I don't have to."

"Well, no you don't, but—for fuck's sake, chief, that look on your face is drivin' me crazy, and not in the good way. You look so far out it's almost stupid. I ain't gonna sit here watchin' your dumb ass grin away for all eternity without botherin' to—"

"The usage of the word 'dumb' to signify mental incompetence, when the latter has nothing whatsoever to do with an inability or unwillingness to speak, is very ableist", you say vaguely. _And surely I haven't actually be__en__ grinning this whole time...?_ "You should know that by now. Be thankful Kurloz isn't close by; I would have had to address this in far greater detail in the presence of someone more likely than I to be trig—"

It's his turn to interrupt you, and with far less delicacy, but you would be lying if you said you weren't thankful for it. "Spare me the lecture, Kankri, and tell me what's got you floating around like you fell into Leijon's catnip."

"What did I just say?" You turn to him at last; your smile is less rusty than it was a month ago when you had nothing to smile for, but it still feels unnaturally broad across your face, and this seems to be reflected in Cronus' widened eyes. "I don't have to."

_You already know. You _should_ already know._

He gives you a searching, almost helpless look, and you sigh. "Truth be told, Cronus, I'm not sure if I _can_ tell you with a clear conscience. Come right down to it, I don't even want to." _It's a secret—I don't need to ask him to know that it could never be anything but a secret._

_Our secret._

"Woah, man." Is genuine hurt reflected in the way he blinks at your words? "That's harsh a you. I thought we were supposed to be friends."

_Isn't everyone?_ "We are", you say honestly. "You are one of my dearest friends and I don't want you to think that anything in the past may have served to change things between us. But this is something I'd rather not address with anybody except whom it concerns. And frankly, I'm a little disappointed that you, of all people, haven't figured it out already."

He raises a thin eyebrow, then a bony shoulder, and lets both fall in resignation. "Well, if you put it that way, I guess I'll just have to think harder", he mutters. "But are you at least gonna tell me if this has anythin' to do with why you're not wearin' that cute little sweater a yours any more?"

"Looking cute wasn't exactly my intention", you reply with some stiffness, a little too aware now of the cold. "Keeping warm was. But if you must know, I stopped wearing it because I returned it to its maker. In a—in a completely unrelated incident."

"You gave it back to Porrim?" he asks so swiftly that it's all you can do not to flush with angry embarrassment; is it that obvious? "She'd never take it back herself, so I'm guessin' you got mad at her. That's what happened, isn't it? You got mad and returned the sweater because a some pride thing—"

"Stop."

You think it's the brevity of your response that actually makes him obey.

"I could explain it to you", you continue, looking away again, "but you're not far off the mark, so let me save myself the trouble and just say yes, that's a fairly accurate summary of what happened. Now please refrain from asking me any more questions on the subject."

You see him toss you an amusingly serious sort of wink from the corner of your eye. "You got it, chief. But doesn't it get cold for you? I mean, I remember how you wouldn't fuckin' clam up about it earlier, and now you're just sittin' here as chill as dammit, so I'm just gonna go out on a limb and say you're too fuckin' happy to feel cold. Which is messed up, but hey, if it keeps you warm."

"Well, as much as I hate to admit it, my flesh is far from impervious to the cold", you sigh ruefully. "It's one of the things I both like and dislike about us having retained all our sensory capabilities in the afterlife." The very thought makes you tremble with the need to run back to your hideaway by the stream, even though you know he will not be there... Not now, not for many nights to come. It has been mere hours since you saw him last.

And yet the glittery bubble of happiness within you refuses to take a puncture.

"Need some help coverin' up? I got some extra shirts that should fit you well enough..."

"I—no, that won't be necessary." It's hard to keep yourself from sounding startled. _What would Karkat think if I wore Cronus' shirt to our next meeting..._ You have covered a wide range of topics during your long, lazy conversations together, but "his" Ampora was not one of them. Something tells you, however, that his opinion would not be a high one.

"Thank you for the offer, though", you add, trying not to regret your refusal already. Cronus gives an uncharacteristic grimace and then, without warning, leans closer with an outstretched arm as though seeking to put it around you; you shy away on reflex, looking inquiringly at him.

"Ah, cut that out", he snaps. "You're cold, aren't ya?"

You believe that if you concentrate hard enough, you really can feel the weight of Karkat's arm on your shoulders still, heavy and warm and comforting. "Not very."

"Still cold, though. Lemme warm you up for a bit."

"I hope you realize that you're naturally a lot colder than I am?" you say, eyeing him skeptically. "That's not even casteism, it's a fact. I'm sure this is a far warmer alternative for me." _I just..._

He makes a noise of impatience. "Chief, do ya have an actual problem with me touchin' you?"

"Not really, but..." _I just want Karkat._

"Then sit tight for a bit." You obey reluctantly, deciding that beggars cannot be choosers, and let Cronus shuffle around until he's sitting behind you. With his arms slung loosely around your neck, his face right beside yours, all you can feel is a sense of wonder at how little even this moves you... And how different things would have been were it Karkat in his place.

But as much as you hate to admit it, even your seadweller friend's skin is warmer than your own right now, and you find yourself leaning back into his embrace with poorly restrained gratitude. "Sorry if this isn't what you'd prefer", he says suddenly in your ear, making you start a little. "It's been a while since I gotta hug anybody at all."

"I don't particularly mind", you murmur. "But as for the lack of physical contact, I'm sure entire sweeps tend to pass between trysts in a place like this?"

"Well... yeah. I'll give you that, boss." His breath is so much cooler than Karkat's that you can almost mistake it for a breeze. "But you tend to miss what you recently had a lot more than wishin' for somethin' you've never really known."

_Ah, Cronus, you don't know the half of it..._

_But he does. And when he figures it out, he'll understand._ "I should leave in a while, though. I have—I need to be somewhere." _Do I? He's not going to be back for a while; we both know that, and I respect that. He has_—not even your cloudy contentment can save you from the sharp pang you feel—_he has a life to lead while I wait for him._

_We know that, both of us._

_But we also know that that isn't going to stop me from putting everything I have into the wait._

"You would", mutters Cronus. "One a these nights I'm gonna find out what's up with you, Kankri."

"You should have done so by now", you reply with playful reproach, just as the voices in the distance give way to a boisterous cry that is only too familiar to your ears.

"Hey, Kankz!"

_Oh..._

You disengage yourself from Cronus' arms with little ceremony and turn around on your spot among the periwinkle grass just in time to catch the smile that was once so dear to you. And it is with considerable relief that you find yourself able to look her in the eye.

"What's shaking, Kan? We never talk these days." And there's the twist in her mouth that you know so well, a gesture which led your heart to thump itself sore against your ribcage not very long ago... Now it seems only that; only a pretty look for a pretty face, neither more nor less. _There's always something ridiculous about the emotions of those whom one no longer loves._

But it was not love; you know that now. You have only loved once.

"Well", you hedge out, choosing your words with care, "We never talk much at all. Surely you realized that." _It's been very, very long since we could talk without something or the other getting in our way. Things might not have changed for you since then, but they certainly have for me. _And how they have changed... every unmoved minute is a wonder; every calm heartbeat a blessing.

Latula's eyes, clear white like yours behind her red glasses, seem to flicker briefly to Cronus before resettling on you. "That's no excuse!" she says with an unmistakeable pout. "You're always busy talking to people about your justice shtick, I'd just feel really out of place butting in."

_You weren't complaining about my justice "shtick" when it gave you the validation you needed._ "And am I supposed to feel any more at home, butting in when you're with Mituna?"

You don't have to keep looking at her to know the look on her face—one of blank, almost childlike hurt, both justified and not, and certainly none of your concern. _I only spoke the truth._ You get to your feet in as dignified a manner as possible and try not to shiver before her.

"See you later, Latula. Please keep Latula entertained, Cronus. I really should be going." The knowledge that you're leaving her with the needy and usually disrespectful Cronus does not sit too well with you, but she is more than capable of dealing with him should he cross a line and all three of you know it. Maybe that's why there is no real gladness in your friend's startled "Yeah, sure" as you walk away with a gait entirely devoid of slink or sulk.

_I really am starting to leave this all behind,_ you think, your eyes and feet so accustomed to the path you're taking that you can barely feel them doing their job.

_For what?_

For a place among the trees with flowing water and dappled sun, heavy with words that you need not say and emotions that you need not control. And there, surrounded by the unspoken secret that is no longer yours alone, weak from your own foolishness, you will wait.

_It all comes back to waiting. _

_It all comes back to you._

The watch that nobody seems to notice—not even with your sweater off and its garish pink flowers so loud against your skin—feels lighter with every tick, as though approaching a beloved master.

For a brief moment, you allow yourself the wild but tempting hope that he really will be there, that he'll turn at the sound of your footsteps and give you that curious unsmile and receive one of your own in return and that's all you will need to do because it'll be alright, he'll _be there._ And then it's gone, and the only certainty you have left is the wait ahead of you.

And yet your heart swoops just a little when you peer around the last row of trees skirting the stream and look first left, then right, and Karkat is nowhere to be seen.

_It's just as well. _You flop inelegantly down onto the dry grass, thinking, _this should teach me not to get my hopes up._

_I haven't learned at all._ And you probably never will.

Because as long as you have him, you have no reason to learn. Not when he's calling your name like this. Not when your head has shot up from your arms and you're looking across the stream with wide, almost frightened eyes, because you could have sworn that was his voice. And you are right; of course you are. You could never mistake his voice for anything else.

"I'm here", he says impatiently, emerging from the tree line on the opposite bank, his scowl intact and as perfunctory as ever. "I didn't think you'd be back so soon, to be honest—do you ever even leave? I just don't have much to do back on the meteor anyway so I thought I'd take a chance with my actual body, because jesus fuck keeping a dreamself in these bubbles is—"

"You called", you hear yourself say with a touch of wonder.

_Just how long ago was it that I was the one calling to you?_

"What else were you expecting me to do, sing? My throat's not exactly well suited to music." He makes a beckoning sort of motion with his hand, as though inviting you across; you shake yourself out of your thoughts and scramble to your feet with near embarrassing immediacy, thankful that the banks are shallow and the stream itself is little more than a trickle.

_You called... you're calling me._

An aching heart has never felt so good.

Up close, he looks unchanged and yet somehow lovelier for the few hours that you were apart, and the urge to tell him so nearly gets the better of you. But nothing, nothing can stop you from throwing your arms around him.

_Why should I ever learn?_

Why indeed, when he holds you like this, so awkwardly and yet as though his very heartbeat is inseparable from yours?

"Easy there", he says quietly, though he shows no signs of letting go. "God damn, how long did you expect to wait anyway?"

_For as long as it took. _"I don't know", you mumble into the wispy warmth of his hair. "I just assumed it'd be a while."

"Well, stop assuming."

_Waiting is all I've had for myself, Karkat._

He raises his head to give you a fleeting glare before saying, "Just listen, because I'm not going to repeat this. I won't stay away for long, ever. To be honest, I can't. So stop assuming."

"You can't?" you ask blankly, unprepared for the rush of color that this brings to his cheeks.

"You heard me." He coughs and steps away at last, leaving you to fight back a fresh shiver. "Let's take a walk, it'll probably warm you up a little. And if you behave maybe I'll give you something when I have to go."

_Give me something...?_ "Is it your heart?" you ask mildly in a moment of playful curiosity, half joking and half not and entirely taken aback by the deadpan look he gives you. "No, stupid. You already have that. Now let's go."

"Wait, wha—?"

"We've been through this, for fuck's sake! Are you coming with me or not?"

_I'll go anywhere with you if you call me. __I'll never need to learn._

_I'll be a fool forever. _You can barely nod in response, but something in the red-faced way he nods back at you says that he already knows your answer.


End file.
